Talk:watershed

Image
What could be a suitable illustration? Maybe something like https://www.flickr.com/photos/turzakchristopher/39376905795/ ? Nemo 06:57, 18 April 2019 (UTC)


 * No, absolutely not :-p
 * That's just a shack on a lake....
 * —DIV (49.186.234.174 12:07, 25 October 2022 (UTC))

Etymology for US/Canada sense

 * 2. (hydrology, US, Canada) A region of land within which water flows down into a specified body, such as a river, lake, sea, or ocean; a drainage basin.

Given the etymology from German meaning a kind of boundary (rather than something contained within a boundary), I suggest that the US/Canada sense was formed by an erroneous, folk etymological interpretation of watershed as something like a metaphorical shed containing water, as in shedloads of water. If so, shouldn't this be indicated in the entry?

—DIV (49.186.234.174 04:59, 25 October 2022 (UTC))

Is "watershed" a calque?
The word "watershed" comes from the German word "Wasserscheide". We're currently saying that this is an example of a calque.

This seems wrong. In all the examples given for "calque" by Wiktionery and Wikipedia, the roots differ between the source and destination languages. "Watershed", on the other hand, looks and sounds like "Wasserscheide". There's no sign of the word having been taken apart and reassembled with domestic components, as can be seen with ("marché aux puces" -> "flea market") or ("skyscraper -> "gratte-ciel") or ("Mercurii dies" -> "Wednesday").

If somebody were to translate the parts deliberately, they wouldn't choose "shed" as the translation for "Scheide" ("divide"). The shed entry calls that use obsolete.

Are we just calling all compound words with foreign roots calques? It seems more specific than that. TypoBoy (talk) 23:25, 11 September 2023 (UTC)